hrvatski

Culture and nutrition: multiple connections between the Mediterranean diet and ageing

The idea of a close bond between food and health/disease is almost a cultural universalia present in all world cultures (Sikkink 2009). Since the 1950s, the Mediterranean diet has been recognized as an empirically grounded pattern of the "healthiest diet" (Roman-Viñas and Serra-Majem 2014, p. 69) and "a biomedical model for healthy eating, a paradigm for healthier lifestyles and an effective tool for weight loss" (Phull 2015, p 35). However, the Mediterranean diet although reduced to the biomedical and nutritional model should always be viewed as part of a complex socio-cultural context (Phull 2015), that can (and should) be analyzed interdisciplinarily from the perspective of social sciences and humanities (for example anthropology, sociology, ethnology, cultural geography, marketing etc.) (Holtzman 2006). The term "Mediterranean diet" is a homogenizing umbrella term that covers geographically large, distant and culturally diverse areas (Contaldo, Pasanisi and Mancini 2003). The socio-cultural dimensions of this diet are also reflected in the fact that in 2013 it was included in the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, where it was described as "a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions" of cultivation, processing, preparation and consumption food, with a particular emphasis on the gender dimension in transgenerational transmission of knowledge, skills and recipes (UNESCO / Intangible Cultural Heritage). The authors present an analysis of the connection between the Mediterranean diet and ageing.

Mediterranean diet, health, healthy ageing, older persons, culture of living, cultural representation, commodification

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